Warmth
by DarkNymfa
Summary: Team Phantom celebrates their ghost-free Christmas.


My Christmas Truce gift for frandajo! It's just... a lot of fluff. That's all it is.

* * *

The soft chiming of the doorbell echoed throughout the house. Sam groaned, but heaved herself out of her chair nonetheless. Her parents were _somewhere_ in the house, and she had to get to the door before them to let her friends in. It was probably only Tucker, since Danny usually took a more... discreet route to avoid her parents, but she would rather not risk it.

Pulling open the door, she was indeed greeted by the sight of only one of her male friends. It wasn't the one she had expected, however.

She quirked an eyebrow at him, but stepped aside to let him in. Danny smiled, warmly, and entered.

"Thanks, Sam. Tucker is running a little late, said that I should go ahead."

"Yeah? What, he couldn't find his entry for our sweater contest or something?" she huffed, but closed the door and started leading Danny towards her room. "Speaking of which, please tell me that you only just put that on."

He flashed her a grin, winking exaggeratedly. "Nope! I've been wearing this all day."

"You're joking." She paused in the opening of her door to look at him. "What did your parents think?"

He barked out a laugh. "Well, they're disappointed that I own this sweater, but they calmed down a little when I mentioned that I bought it for our 'ugly Christmas sweater' contest. Jazz is stuck somewhere between thinking it's hilarious, and thinking it's awful."

"Yeah? How come?" Sam asked, dropping back into the chair she had sat on earlier. Danny fell into a different chair, stretching out like a cat.

"She thinks the sweater is great, of course. I mean, she loves this kind of stuff. She hates how oblivious our parents are, though." He shrugged. "Well, that, and she doesn't like that they hated it because it's associated with Phantom."

Before Sam could respond, however, the doorbell rang again. Danny scrambled up to answer, but she shoved him back into the chair as she passed him. "Sit down, I'll get it."

Moments later she entered the room again, Tucker trailing behind her. Danny barely stifled a snort at his sweater, instead producing a bizarre half-choking sound.

"Dude, you okay?""Danny, what the heck?" Sam and Tucker asked, simultaneously. Danny waved off his concerned friends, catching his breath again before answering.

"Yeah, fine. Just… Tucker, where did you even _get_ that?"

The teen in question grinned, straightening up and splaying his hands next to his chest, showing off his sweater to the best effect.

The sweater itself was quite possibly the weirdest clothing item that Danny had ever witnessed. And considering that his parents wear brightly colored jumpsuits 24/7, that was quite an achievement. It was primarily red, with fairly standard Christmas-sweater patterning in green and yellow across most of the body and sleeves. There were two broad strokes, however, where the generic patterning was instead replaced with pictures of green dinosaurs and light green snowflakes.

The thing that stood out most, however, was the plush dinosaur that stuck out from the center of Tucker's chest. It was some kind of generic green dinosaur, with pointy teeth stitched on and small arms barely poking out.

It was also, quite undeniably, attached to the sweater itself.

Seeing that his audience had been stunned beyond words, Tucker's grin broadened.

"Isn't it _fantastic_? The moment I saw it online, I _knew_ I had to buy it. And you haven't even seen the best part yet!"

"There's _more_?" Sam hissed, incredulous.

Impossibly, Tucker's smile widened _even further_ , and he turned around. The back of his sweater followed the same patterns as the front. Red, with green and yellow. And, of course, the back half of the plush dinosaur, pointedly sticking out of Tucker's back. The legs were so long that they reached his lower back, and the tail was almost as long as Tucker's arm.

Now, Danny didn't even _try_ to stifle his laughter. Tears started rolling down his cheeks as he laughed, curling in on himself, and he could hear Sam cracking up as well. Tucker just stood there smiling, having turned back around.

When finally their laughter subsided, Sam pushed herself upright.

"Well Tucker, I think you've just won."

"Yeah," Danny agreed, as he straightened himself out as well, crossing his arms over his chest. "I thought I had a pretty good sweater too, but it's got nothing compared to yours."

"Ah, come on." Tucker flapped a hand at them. "At least show me yours before you declare me the winner."

Sam rolled her eyes, but pushed herself out of her chair nonetheless. Her sweater suited her well, but it wasn't particularly Christmas-themed, nor was it very funny. It was primarily black, with purple detailing. The patterns were mostly shaped like spiders, with the occasional spider-webs thrown in.

"Lemme guess, Skulk and Lurk?" Tucker questioned, plopping down into the only unclaimed chair in the room.

"Yep," Sam confirmed as she sat down again. "I saw this _really_ bad one that I considered buying, but I didn't want to risk my mom finding it."

"Really? How bad was it?" Danny quirked an eyebrow at her. Sam was incredibly competitive, it wasn't like her to throw away a possible win over something minor like her parents' disapproval.

"It was _terrible._ " She shifted a little to look at her friends as she spoke. "Bright pink, with unicorns and rainbows and everything. But you know my mom, if she found it, and she _would have_ if I had bought it, she would have never shut up about it."

"Ooh, that's a shame. You might've had a shot with the sheer shock factor of seeing you in something that girly." Tucker shrugged, however, and smiled at Danny. "And what about you, ghost boy? Because you've been covering your sweater pretty much this entire time, and I wanna see it real bad."

"Well..." Danny said as he tapped into his ghost powers, floating himself upright so he could keep his arms folded across his chest. He winked at Sam before theatrically throwing his hands aside to reveal the sweater, puffing out his chest as well. "Tah-dah!"

His sweater, like Sam's, was primarily black. The detailing, however, was a snowy white. The patterns were generic scribbles, with the occasional ghost thrown in. The big winner, however, was the Danny Phantom logo set right in the center of Danny's chest.

"Please tell me you've worn that in your house," Tucker whispered, a hint of awe tinting his voice. Danny merely grinned in response. "Dude, you did _not._ What did your folks think?"

Danny shrugged, settling back into his seat. "They hated my apparent support of Phantom, but they were okay with it when I told them I bought it for our contest."

"Really, that's it? No one connected the dots?"

"Nope." Danny rolled his eyes. "Jazz is convinced that there's some kind of psychological thing going on, where they're ignoring the obvious evidence because they don't _want_ to believe it. Or something like that."

"It's Jazz," Sam pointed out. "She blames just about everything on psychological problems."

Danny clicked his tongue. "Touché."

"She might be onto something, though. You've certainly dropped enough hints around them."

"Oh please," Sam huffed. "Everyone in Amity is unobservant as heck. Pretty sure no one in this city will know unless Danny transforms right in front of them."

"Which has happened before," Danny chimed in. "Not that anyone but us remembers, but still."

"That's not what I was talking about-"

"Nope, shut up, we're not talking about this today," Danny interrupted, waving his hand in Tucker's general direction. "I'm trying to make this my first actually enjoyable Christmas where nothing goes wrong, and we're not jinxing it by talking about identity revealing."

"Well, in that case-," Tucker jiggled his eyebrows, making Sam crack up and drawing a snort from Danny, "-how about we talk about the sweater contest, which I most definitely won."

"Yeah yeah, you've won alright. I don't think we could have topped that monstrosity even if we knew you were bringing it."

"I dunno..." Danny bit his lip, deep in thought. "I might've been able to find something in the Ghost Zone. If Christmas is such a big thing, with the truce and all, I _bet_ they have some crazy sweaters too."

"Dude, that's definitely cheating."

"No it isn't! No one is stopping you from going into the Ghost Zone and getting a crazy ghost sweater!"

"Yeah, I agree with Danny," Sam interjected. "Saying he can't use the Ghost Portal to get a stupid sweater would be like forbidding me from using my money or you from using your mad computer skills. Especially since we could just steal the Specter Speeder to go ourselves."

"Ugh," Tucker groaned. "I guess so."

"Cheer up Tuck!" Danny poked his friend in the shoulder, having rolled his chair over for that exact purpose. "At least you won this year."

"And it'll never happen again!" Sam joyfully added, grinning impishly.

"Jerks," Tucker muttered, eyes crinkling with barely hidden joy.

Danny moved his chair away from Tucker again, pushing off of the floor to start spinning around. After mere moments he had build enough momentum that his friends were forced to stop looking, lest they grew sick.

"Why don't we go watch a movie?" Sam asked, hoping to distract the boy so he would slow down again.

Tucker scoffed. "I'm not leaving the house, and definitely not for some crummy movie. Do you know how cold it is outside?"

Sam quirked an eyebrow at him. "We don't _have_ to leave the house to watch a movie. I don't know if you remember my _giant home cinema_?"

"What kind of movie?" Danny cut in, still spinning at vomit-inducing speeds.

"I don't know, some kind of seasonal movie?"

"No," Danny rejected. Sam tried glaring at Danny, but he was going too fast to notice, and she was forced to give up.

Tucker hummed. "A horror movie set during Christmas, then?"

"No."

Sam snorted. "How about you provide us with a brilliant suggestion, then?"

Danny stopped, sudden enough to give a normal person whiplash. For a half-ghost who was used to getting thrown into buildings at several dozen miles an hour, however, it was nothing noteworthy.

"I dunno. Wasn't there some new Femalien movie, or something?"

"Coming out next month."

"Ugh, really?" Danny grumbled, flopping over the side of the chair. "I thought one came out a few months ago."

"Nah. I think all this ghost hunting is screwing with your brain, dude."

"How about," Sam completely ignored the two bickering teens, "that new ghost hunting show everyone's been going nuts about? It's getting really good reviews outside of Amity, and according to the people at Skulk and Lurk it's hilariously inaccurate."

Danny rolled over onto the other side of the chair, fixing Sam with a contemplative gaze. Eventually he shrugged. "Yeah, sure, let's go with that."

"I agree!" Tucker called, apparently feeling ignored. "Let's get down to the basement!"

With a gracefulness that most people don't associate with Danny Fenton, the boy rolled out of his chair, landing perfectly on his feet. "Alright, let's go!"

"Jeez, no need to be so hyper about it. We've got all day to chill out, remember?" Sam rolled her eyes, exasperated but fondly.

"Yeah dude," Tucker said as he climbed to his feet as well. "No parents, no ghosts. Just us, hanging out."

"Alright, alright. Let's just go enjoy ourselves, then."

"Amen to that!"


End file.
